Carlsbad City Beach Surf Stats

The graph shows the combination of swells directed at Carlsbad City Beach over a normal November, based on 3347 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Carlsbad City Beach. In the case of Carlsbad City Beach, the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 36% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Carlsbad City Beach and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Carlsbad City Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical November, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Carlsbad City Beach run for about 64% of the time.

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